Taking Knits (and myself) Outside

All the people who talk about taking good photographs of your crafts say "get them outside in natural sunlight."

I am eternally grateful that I found a lovely house that has windows...lots and lots of windows, that when opened let in a lot of natural light because...

I'm terrifically allergic to outside.  Especially in spring when (around here anyway) everything is yellow--even 10 minutes after all the rain has dried up.  I know it's temporary, but right now my eyes are pretty much weeping all the time. I have drops and they help, but still....it's pretty much not fun most of the time.

I did, however, finish my Sugared Violets Shawl (otherwise known as "Love your Mother Earth Shawl") and wanted to have a modeling session with it, outside, next to the azaleas which are finally blooming, so...that's what I did yesterday.

Isn't it lovely?

Tomorrow, I will show you what I've decided to do with the rest of this gorgeous yarn.

Friday Night and Saturday

I laid low this weekend to get better. So I knitted to mybheart's content, got to bed early, slept late...and I do feel better this Sunday morning. Progress on the shawl was phenomenal...the socks got ripped out and a new pair started. After finishing the shawl I knew I needed to do something else with the yarn that was left other than putting it into a scrap blanket, so I started a hat. Happy days!

I'm hoping for a modeled shot with the shawl since David will be home today!

Last night and this morning

Last night, I came home, ate dinner, didn't clean the kitchen, and knitted.  The shawl was calling my name, clambering to be worked on, so that's what I did.  Knitted on the shawl, listened to my book and just chilled until it was time to go to bed.

I'm not sure yet if I'm avoiding the sock, or if the shawl just wants to be knitted that badly.  I haven't thoroughly liked the pattern so far.  In fact, I'm considering just knitting the foot plain so it'll be over more quickly.  That should be a sign that it's not working for me.  We will see.  I THINK what the problem is is that I don't like doing the doubled decrease...the slipping as if to knit-2-together then slipping those 2 stitches over is kind of tight and slow, and I'm not crazy about it...it looks great so I don't want to do a different doubled decrease...so I'm waivering.  Frog now when I just have a few repeats in or sally forth and finish.  It'll be pretty...but it may also never get finished.

I'll make a decision tomorrow because to be honest, today I'm just not up to it.  I'm tired since it stormed from about midnight on last night.  The rain was particularly bad right at the time for me to leave this morning, so I waited to go for about 30 minutes...and even so the roads were very very wet.  I do hate driving on wet roads.

I also feel like I'm coming down with a cold.  We'll see if it becomes anything, but everyone at work has been sick, so it's probably my turn.

Here is the most beautiful shawl.  I've done the first pattern repeat on the lace edged border.  2 more pattern repeats of it to go, then another little eyelet row followed by 2 rows of garter stitch.  This puppy will be finished tomorrow and then it's blocking time.

I wanted you to see how much of the first ball I have left...not much.  And there are lots and lots of stitches on each row right now, so it won't last much longer.  I'm going to do a double knot join so I can not worry about running out mid-row.  Also, I think attempting to weave in ends on a lace is not going to work out very well.

In case you're enthralled by watching this shawl grow, I will post pics tomorrow and Sunday, so stay tuned!

Adrift

Sometimes, after finishing a good book or an awesome knitting project, I feel adrift.  Unfocused.  Unable to settle into something.

That's how I felt last night.

I went to the dentist yesterday afternoon for my cleaning (no cavities! yea me!) and then came home, prepped dinner and lunch, and then sat down to work on something.  Only I didn't really want to work on anything.  I had a hard time concentrating and really couldn't figure out what to do.

So, I got up and cleaned the kitchen since it needed to be done and then settled back down for my new book (Tea Time for the Traditionally Built by Alexander McCall Smith) and some knitting.

I did manage to get some knitting done, but not a lot.  I encouraged myself with a small goal--one pattern repeat on the sock, get through the eyelet rows on the shawl--so that's what I did.

Then I went to bed where I slept like the dead until 6am this morning.  Maybe I was tired last night?

Reading...and knitting

I've always been an avid reader.  I read all the time as a child.  I'd have a book in my book bag and one at home and wouldn't mix them.  I loved having multiple stories and characters going through my head all the time.  When I was in 3rd grade I read all the books in the school library section for "3rd grade and under" so they moved me up to the "older" books.  This is when I fell in love with Laura Ingalls Wilder.

I even majored in English in college because I could read and get "credit" for it.  Then I read probably 5 books at a time, finishing 3 or so per week.  It was intense, especially in grad school, but mostly I loved it.

Then one day when I was trying to get myself motivated to work on my English dissertation (which is different from the one I actually finished) I realized that I didn't have to read any book that I wasn't interested in.  This made me feel free, liberated somehow and I ended up combing through my library and ridding myself of any book that I didn't love.  My to-be-read shelf was combed through carefully and books I wasn't terrifically excited about reading got donated to the library.

After deciding that I didn't want the PhD in English and instead starting over (yes, I started over) on a doctorate in higher education leadership, I promised myself that I would never waste time on books again.  If I didn't like it...off it went.  Even if I was just starting, or over half-way through.  I would not ever read a book again if I wasn't having fun reading it.

Then when I was writing my dissertation, I didn't want to read anything "hard" or that made me think.  I told myself that all I'd read while writing was romance novels, so I did.  And I loved it.

Then something weird happened.  I turned in my last revision on my dissertation, looked at my to-be-read shelf and didn't want to read a single book in there.  I got a few books by my favorite authors on my Kindle and I didn't want to read those.  I tried and tried to find something that would interest me, but I was just simply not interested in reading.

And it's very very weird.  What I am interested in instead is knitting, and I'm not skilled enough to do both at the same time.

But, something else happened to me a little over a year ago.  I decided that I was not going to be able to handle, for one more day, the commute to work.  I was terrifically bored on the drive in (about an hour) and going home was torture.  People kept recommending audio books, but I have a hard time paying attention to people talking and thought it wouldn't work for me.  Desperation brought about desperate measures, though, and I bought Outlander.  A book I knew I loved and since the new installment was going to be released "soon" I thought it would be a good experience to start from book 1 and read through.  I had time (these books are super-long).  So, I invited Claire and Jaime to come on my commute and a world of opportunities opened up for me.

I didn't mind my drive in...in fact, I sort of looked forward to it, especially when the books were getting good.  I've re-listened to books I've read before and had different experiences listening to them.  The narrators really do bring a lot to the books and it makes the experiences different--sometimes better sometimes not.

I still like my romances.  I listen to a lot of them.  But I also am starting to enjoy my books that are "harder" reads.  The ones that will challenge me, make me think, and provide me with opportunities to TALK ABOUT books with people again.

How wonderful.

But, you know what else is awesome?  I can listen to books while I knit...it's amazing.  And so much better than watching TV because I don't have to look up or miss anything because I'm not looking up.

I'm so glad that Audible has a wonderful subscription program because if it didn't, I'd probably break the bank in how quickly I'm consuming books this year...but that's ok.  I'm reading again and it's awesome.

The book I finished last night was one that I want to go back and read again.   The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton.  Go get your copy, read it, be amazed at how the story plays out...the writing, the imagery, the beauty of that book.  And do it quickly because I need to talk with people about this book while it's still on my mind!

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Knitting progress:  I finished the Chicken Socks!  I got to the next eyelet row on the shawl (but only worked on it for a quick stint because I needed to finish the socks).  And I started the next pair of socks.  They are "spring" socks that I'm doing a knit-a-long with the Seasonal Sock Syndrome folks.  The yarn for those is Lorna's Laces SoleMate, which I'm not sure I'm sold on.  It has a tenseness to it that I'm not sure I like for socks, but we shall see how it ends up knitting up.  The colors are gorgeous, as are all LL colors.  This one is called Circus, I believe.  I had a hard time reading the label, but David picked it out of all the yarns that I threw on the floor as the one that sang "spring" to him.  The pattern on the new socks is Celebrate Spring by Anne Budd.

How do I work?

I promised to talk about how I work today, and I promised that you'll probably think I'm weird after this post...but if so, oh well.  I am what I am and can hardly change that, now can I?

I want to preface this post by saying, also, that my kids are grown, that I get off of work at 4pm, that my husband is the cook in the family, and that finally, I'm no longer taking classes so my evenings are my evenings and I revel in them because for so long, my evenings belonged to any and everyone else and it just feels nice to sit and do what I want for several hours straight.

(also, and this is a bit sad, but I hurt my foot somehow and haven't been able to exercise in a few weeks.  I'm hoping that it gets better soon, but until it does, I've got that extra 30 minutes at night).

OK...so here goes.

I get home around 5pm.  At this point we usually eat supper--or very near it.  We're done by 5:30 and I clean up the kitchen after that.  Sometimes, if it's been a long day, I may knit for a bit first, but most of the time I prefer just to get the cleaning up done.

After cleaning up, I'll check Facebook, Ravelry, play some Candy Crush and check my e-mail...and then I'll knit for 30 minutes or until the "top of the hour."  Last night, because I had the whole evening in front of me alone, I listened to my audiobook and set it to turn off after 30 minutes.  This allowed me 30 minutes of knitting time, and then I took a break to do some chore around the house.

I'll pack my lunch, fold/wash clothes, have a shower, or do something else around the house during my break.  This is good to get my other muscles moving and give my hands a break.

Then I'm back to knitting for 30 minutes or until the top of the hour.  On an evening like last night I can get 4 or 5 knitting sessions in.  Last night I got 4, 2 on each project.

Also, I like to have 2 projects going at once.  This keeps my hands from getting over tired using the same size needle or working on the same "tension"...and that's also a good thing.

Update on progress.  The sock is over half way finished with the foot, and the first row of the eyelet pattern has been done on the shawl.  It was at this point in the pattern that I've ever lost count of my stitches or realized that there's an error in stitch count, but something's not quite right with the number of stitches I "should" have the number that I do have...I'm not overly worried as this is a shawl and it won't matter too much until I get to the lace portion at the end of the shawl...the rows are long and take a good while, so in 30 (or so) minutes I may get 4 rows done.

Club Dragonfly and A Week in the Life of Knitting

Two things today!

1.  Club Dragonfly arrived on Saturday.  I don't think it was supposed to get to us before today but we got it on Saturday and it may have been the most beautiful yarn I've ever seen.  I love it.  Plain and simple.  The pattern that came with the yarn is leg warmers, and while it's been cool this winter, I'm not a leg-warmer girl.  Never have been and just don't think I will be unless I move to Canada and then I'll probably wear anything to be warm.  SO...knowing this I decided to seek out something else I could make with 670 yards of gorgeous sport-weight yarn.

At first I thought I would make a camisole or shell sweater, but realized that I'll probably need something like 750 yards of sport-weight yarn to complete one in a size Medium...and to be honest, I don't want to "add" anything to this yarn to spoil its beauty, so off I went in search of a shawl.  I immediately thought of one I downloaded on Ravelry a while back and decided this was the pattern.  I cast on for it before the end of the day on Saturday and there you go.  A shawl in the most gorgeous yarn ever was begun.


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2.  This week I'm going to detail my progress each day.  I'll take a picture of my knitting before I go to bed.  I think this will be interesting to show-case how much knitting I can get done of an evening and what captivates and interests me about the projects I'm working on.  What I have below are pics of the two projects I worked on on Saturday and Sunday.  The first is the Chicken Socks.  I cast the purple cuff on Thursday night, knitted down the leg on Friday and then Saturday finished it.

Since the "most beautiful" yarn arrived on Saturday late afternoon, I had to search around for its pattern, which I finally found, and wound the skeins into cakes and ended up with this amount of progress on Saturday evening.

Sunday dawned bright and early for me and I immediately started my rotation of working on the two main projects...the sock and the shawl.  I got this far by bedtime on Sunday.

That's a lot of work on the shawl, btw, and I'm about to be at the interesting part where the eyelet rows start.

Patterns:

• Socks--basic 56 stitch sock with different colored heels, cuffs and toes.
• Shawl--Sugared Violets

Yarn:

• Socks--Blue Moon Fiber Arts Club Yarn--Doodle Doo (the patterns had chickens on them, so I'm doing my own pattern for this one as chickens aren't really my thing).
• Shawl--Dragonfly Fibers Damsel in March 2014 club color: "Love Your Mother (Earth)"

More on how I work tomorrow...You'll probably think me weird, but alas...it's me! :)